Smells Like Home
by GoddessofSnark
Summary: Scent is most powerfully tied to memory. Slashy if you squint.


A/N - I have a problem with these, they keep wanting to branch out differently, want to become four different stories in one, so any suggestions to trim the fat off of this and leave the lean would be much appreciated.  


* * *

All hospitals smelled the same. The overpowering stench of antiseptic-antiseptic that had been purposely formulated to overpower the other stenches of a hospital. Most people hated the smell of antiseptic, but they'd hate the other smells even more if they'd have to deal with them.

After a while, just as funeral directors get used to the smell of formaldehyde that is used to cover up the smell of death and decay, same as antiseptic was used to cover the smell of dying and decaying, the smell starts to go unnoticed. Just something that the body has adjusted to. The brain starts to tune out the signals from the smell, same as a mother tunes out the fifth time she's been forced to watch the same episode of Barney.

But at the same time, every hospital had it's own unique scent. The combination of all the little things. Like what brand of disinfectant they used on front desk and the seats in the waiting room. The way that scents stuck to the carpeting. The nurse's perfumes, the doctor's colognes, the type of soap they had. The antiseptic is the smell of the hospital in general, but there was a signature tied to each individual place.

Which was why when House walked in to the waiting room of Princeton Med, his brain was telling him that something was wrong. This was a hospital, but it wasn't the same scent he was used to day in and day out. That this scent was different and wrong. Similar, but very very different, and very very wrong.

He paced, as best he could, back and forth across the waiting room, not wanting to sit in one of the ugly mauve chairs. A vicodin was popped as he waited for some news, any news. After what seemed like forever, a young doctor-it seemed as though ever ER was filled with fresh-faced Dougie Howsers, drawn to the job out of the portrayal on TV, putting in their time before retiring to other specialties or general practice.

He doesn't ask the question everyone does, and it sets the young doctor off a bit-throws him off his game. After a moment, he recovers. "He's fine, you can see him now. We're finishing up the paperwork, and then he can be discharged" Fine might have described how Wilson was doing physically, but it didn't describe how he looked.

"Jesus." The word was a bit of a hiss, and he saw Wilson wince.

"Is it really that bad?" The words are slightly slurred.

"Your face looks like it met the wrong side of a meat tenderizer. I didn't realize bruises could be in quite so many colors." He sat in the chair next to the bed, and raised an eyebrow. "You know Robin Williams has this great bit on alcohol." Wilson listens, drawn in to whatever it is House is going to say. "He said when he quit drinking, he was the same asshole, just with fewer dents in his car. You should probably take his advice."

"Advice? From a commedian?"

"Yes, because driving your car off a guardrail and down a hill is a very funny thing." The words are snappish, but Wilson feels touched-he's only like this when he's really irate about something. And being really irate meant that he cared, and was upset that he was dragged out to the ER at three in the morning.

"Wasn't driving." He shakes his head much more than is really necessary.

"Fine, swerving."

"Sleeping. I kicked off the parking brake trying to get comfortable. Keys never left my pockets." House grabs the cut-down khakis and hears the jangle of keys inside, knowing that if they had to cut him out of the car that Wilson would have never bothered to get the keys from the ignition.

"Yes, well, your car didn't appreciate that very much." Wilson just groans the sort of groan that often prefaced a whine of 'mom's gonna _kill_ me.' "Why didn't you call a cab?" Something was wrong about this situation, and he was trying to figure it out through his alcohol-muddled mind.

"Aren't we usually on the opposite ends of this conversation?" House says nothing, but thrusts a bag with clean clothes in it at him.

"Get dressed, they're releasing you. Luckily alcohol also causes you to not brace for impact. Worst you've got, despite going over a hill, is fifteen stitches in your arm where you decided to put it through the passenger window." The voice is gruff, harsh, cold. Wilson's doesn't need his mother to lecture him, all he needs is that tone of voice to make him feel even more miserable than his parents ever could.

The sound of a cane hitting tiled floors echoes out, followed by the swoosh of the automatic doors, and at this hour in the morning, he doubted it could have been anyone else leaving. He merely followed orders, and put his clothes back on, assesing his damages as he did so. For the most part, he was fine. Bruised, battered, cut up, but nothing hurt more than anything else, aside from the pain in his right arm where the stitches were.

He leaves the shirtsleeves undone, not wanting the fabric to brush against his wound if it can. It's just an extra inch of breathing room, but that inch is enough for him. He manages to hobble out, legs unsteady and battered, but functional. House's car is sitting in the circular drive, and Wilson's reminded of why he picked PPTH over Princeton Med. Every time he's forced to come here, he swears that the damn statue of a woman in a wheelchair with her doctor is going to come whizzing down the ramp that it's perched on and into his car.

He knows better, but the statue at a distance, is damned convincing. All the hospitals have one, some local artist who was doing something for the community. RWJ's is tucked away in a corner of a garden, and PPTH's is in the center, looking good with the rest of the greenery. Why this one had to put somewhere to freak out all the drivers, he didn't think he'd ever know.

But he gets into the car, and watches House scratch an itch on his nose. There's something not quite right about the motion, but he can't figure it out with his alcohol-soaked mind. He watches the scenery whiz by, and feels that House's driving is different-more restrained. He hadn't even realized he'd put his car out of park-he'd merely woken up in an ambulance wondering where the hell he was. And once told, he'd called House to come get him.

They're silent on the drive back, House has a weird look on his face, and anyone who had known him for more than five minutes would know better than to try talking right now. Wilson doesn't try. He just sits in an a alcohol-hazed state, thinking that Princeton looks very pretty all lit up for the holidays. It's only when he realized that they were on 206, and heading nowhere towards route 1 that he said anything.

"Hotel's that way." He gestured out the left window, banging his arm, making him wince.

"We're not going to your hotel." House swerved the car harder than he really needed to as he pulled into his complex. "Get out. Or will you screw something up doing that? If you damage my car-"

"I'm fine." The alcohol was wearing off, and he was much more rational.

"You were so drunk you didn't notice your car falling off a hill!" The words are screamed, and someone across the way shouts to shut the hell up.

"I'm fine." But Wilson follows House inside anyway. He takes his customary spot on the couch, already intimately familiar with just how different each cushion was. The middle one sagged the most, the further away you got from center, the firmer the couch was. Sort of like the man it belonged to. Wilson smiles to himself at coming up with such an astute metaphor, and openshis mouth to tell his friend that he had finally figured him out.

But he closes it again when he sees the look on his friend's face. "I-I'm sorry daddy? It won't happen again?" Blue eyes roll heavenwards, but only for a second.

"_You_ are an idiot." The words are familiar, but the voice isn't. It's supposed to be his voice saying that, not House's.

"It was a silly mistake. How many times have you done something stupid while drunk?"

"I've always called a cab! Or someone! Or you!"

"Glad to know I'm not a someone." House sits heavily in the chair, and for a moment, however brief, the stoic facade fades, and Wilson sees the lines that run his friends face, and the look in his eyes that he's never seen before. The comment he makes goes unanswered. "You seem upset."

"I just got woken up to pick your sorry ass up from the hospital. Now take off your shirt."

"What?" The question is more of a squeak as he tries to figure out what's going on.

"I don't trust those hacks at Princeton Med, for all I know you could be bleeding out of six organs and they would have put the wrong name on the MRI." Wilson obeys, and House studies him with the careful eye of a doctor, poking and prodding at some of the worse looking cuts and bruises. Wilson winces each time, but realizes that this is just retribution for what he's done.

"I'm fine."

"You were lucky." It's then Wilson figures out what that unknown emotion that had flickered up earlier, when House didn't think anyone was looking is.

"You're upset."

"Of course I'm upset. I was in the middle of a great dream involving a threesome with Cuddy and Carmen Electra." This time it's brown eyes rolling heavenwards.

"Why is it so hard for you to admit normal human emotions?"

"I'm not a normal human."

"No, you're not." The no is slightly drawn out, the same way it always is. They've had this argument before, and it was always phrased the exact same way. "But it doesn't make you any less of a man to actually feel worried."

"I don't feel like any less of a man." It's not admitting to being worried, but it's not a denial either. Wilson thinks he's starting to make progress.

Wilson likes his spot on the couch. It smells like home. Warm, comforting. But when he's more sober, he hates it, because it's a reminder of everything he'll never have. He'll never have someone to love unconditionally, so that he doesn't need to sleep on the couch. He'll never have House's stoic facade and excuses to get away from dealing with real emotions.

It's then that he realizes something that he's never realized before, and he wonders what caused this train of thought in the first place. Only the thoughts are familiar, like deja vu. That the only person that he always had relied on, the only person he knows will make him smile after a long day, the one person that exasperated him, but turned each day into a new challenge, the one person that he could honestly say that he loved-in a way that he never had with his wives was sitting across from him.

And then the realization of why he had gone to the bar in the first place hits him. That he had made this discovery earlier that day. That he had realized that the reason why three marriages, and a more girlfriends than he could count had failed was because there was always a sliver of his heart set aside for his best friend. That given the choice, he had always picked House over whoever was on his arm.

And he hadn't particularly liked the realization that he would never be in a happy, normal relationship. That the one person to have wormed his way into Wilson's heart was a cynical, arrogant, sarcastic jerk. Hell, Amber had pretty much been a female House, which was perhaps why he was so attracted to her. He still doesn't like this realization, but it's something that the alcohol has resigned him to. His best friend was the one that he was happiest with, the one that managed to succeed where every other wife had failed.

"So just what was the occasion to get you quite so plastered?" Wilson pauses at the question, and gets a bottle of water, hoping that House will have forgotten the question in the time he's gone.

"You know bottled water is bad for the enviroment."

"If I cared about the enviroment, I'd be donating to the Sierra Club. Why are you still drunker than on your wedding nights?"

"I came to an awful realization about myself." It's not an admission, but it's not a denial of what he's feeling either.

"Ooo, goody. What is it this time?"

"What does it matter?"

"Blackmail material."

"It isn't as though you actually care." Something flickers in the blue eyes, and Wilson regrets what he's said, but doesn't apologize. It's all House's fault, he thinks. His life being in shambles was House's fault. The man couldn't possibly care. "Sorry." He eventually mumbles when the silence gets to be too much for him.

"For what? I don't have any normal human emotions after all, it's not as though I _can_ care."

"You do care, otherwise you would have left me in the hospital. And you're upset. Admit it, you were worried." There's another long silence, and he goes to apologize again. He's cut short by a single word.

"Don't." Wilson looks at him, trying to figure out what the man is thinking. "Don't apologize. Even Jimmy's allowed to be right sometimes."

"I'm fine, there's no reason to be worried."

"I'm not _still_ worried. Now I'm just pissed that you woke me up and I wont be able to get back to sleep."

"You're upset because you were worried?" He had to admit, it was twisted Housian logic, but Wilson had long since learned the way his friend's mind worked. A shrug was the only response he gets.

"What are you, my therapist?"

"Your friend." There's another awkward silence, and Wilson's the one to break it. "Thank you." He murmurs, eyes half-closed. When he gets no response they open, and he sees House hastily sitting further back. He goes to scratch his nose again, and Wilson realizes what looked awkward about the move before. There's a little swipe across the cheekbone-barely noticeable, but he catches it, and he knows.

"Don't do-do something like this again." The shell is back in place, the cracks in it having been repaired. Nothing else needs to be said. Wilson can hear the faint hint of desperation-only it's coming from the wrong voice. "And if you do, do it at a reasonable hour, where you're not interrupting my sleep."

"Yes, _dad_." The tone is light, ignoring the moment of weakness. And for that, the gratitude on House's face is plain.

"You're paying for gas while I'm carting your sorry ass to work." Wilson merely grins, and follows House as he limps towards the bedroom, intending to part ways at the end of the hall, making the right towards the bathroom.

When they reach the parting of the ways, there's a moment of hesitation, and before Wilson knows what's going on, there's an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. He returns the embrace, gladly. This is a declaration of feelings that would never come from either mouth-of a relationship that they'd never speak of because it would just be _too weird._ But it is what they are, and Wilson thinks it feels good to know that House worries as much as he does.

The embrace ends as abruptly as it started, and House opens the door to his bedroom. "G'night." He calls over one shoulder. "Remember, there's no parking brakes on the couch."

There's a grin, and Wilson opens the door to the bedroom. "I won't drive your couch over a hill." Yes, it feels good to know that House _cares_, even if it won't be admitted. He sits on the couch, pulling a blanket up, and takes a deep breath. It smells like whiskey, like the lemon that gets used only when he's there to clean up after House, like leather. There's the hint of House's cologne, and the smell of his detergent. There's the lingering scent of hospital, that seems to creep in simply because of the way it clings, and refuses to leave.

And to Wilson, it smells like home.


End file.
